Protecting Democracy

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Tax Day 2019: It’s Time to Release the Returns, Repeal the Tax Scam, and Reinvest in America

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It’s Tax Day again, when we all come together to chip in our fair share toward the cost of government. That is—except for the tax cheats and corporations so adept at wiggling out of their tax bills they pay $0, or worse, get a refund check from Uncle Sam. Big name companies like Netflix, Amazon, IBM, and GM are just tip of the iceberg when it comes to large, profitable corporations that paid no taxes or got money back from the government last year.

The need for a real tax code overhaul has never been greater, especially since the partisan tax giveaway package that was rushed through the process without hearings or proper input from the public. It was the product of K Street lobbying, with Public Citizen research showing that more than 60 percent of the D.C. lobby corps tried to influence the tax package—more than 7,000 individual lobbyists.

President Trump and the GOP made a lot of false promises about the 2017 tax giveaway package—which voters rightly saw as a scam, and it remains very unpopular to this day. It’s no surprise since the tax cut legislation has done much to enrich wealthy shareholders, corporate CEOs and Wall Street bankers and while average Americans have felt little assistance from the changes. And, the hole in the budget these tax cuts are already leaving will lead to declining services for families that are suffering and fewer health care dollars for seniors and others who need care.

Before we get to next year’s Tax Day, we need to do three things: release Trump’s tax returns, repeal the provisions of the 2017 tax giveaway bill that enriched the wealthy and corporations, and redesign the tax code in a way the will create new revenues to reinvest in American communities.

Release the Returns

Public Citizen’s members and supporters, have been clamoring for the release of Trump’s tax returns since he first announced his candidacy for office, including countless activists participating in Tax March events across the country two years ago. Yet, Trump has refused to disclose his tax information. This, despite decades of precedent set by his predecessors.

That’s why we were so pleased that the text of H.R. 1, the For the People Act –the sweeping ethics, campaign finance and voting rights reform package made it clear that future presidential and vice-presidential candidates and office holders will be required by law to disclose tax information moving forward, including business and individual income tax returns. Even though HR 1 passed with overwhelming support in the House last month, we must not be made to wait until the For the People Act is signed into law to determine how his tax policy maneuvers have personally benefited the president.

The Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.) recently, after much deliberation, used the power granted to the committee under Sec. 6103(f)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code to request the past six years of President Trump’s personal and some of his business tax returns from the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department. The letter of the law is clear: It says that the Treasury Secretary shall furnish the returns to the Committee upon written request. There is no wiggle room.

Yet the first deadline set by Chairman Neal came and went without Sec. Mnuchin having provided the returns. That is inexcusable. Now Chairman Neal has more than generously provided a new deadline of April 23. However, it’s outrageous Treasury did not meet the first deadline– so Public Citizen is joining allies for a rally today at 5pm outside of the IRS to demand that they not take any additional time but that they release the returns now!

The Ways and Means Committee needs Trump’s tax return information to perform proper oversight into exactly how much he personally financially gained by pushing for specific tax changes and signing the 2017 bill into law. Most of Trump’s hundreds of businesses are organized as limited liability companies (LLCs) and those types of entities received an extremely generous new deduction. Not to mention the need for oversight into the many questions about the president’s possible financial connections to Russia and other foreign powers that may have influenced policy decisions. Also, with oversight authority over the Internal Revenue Service, the Ways and Means Committee must investigate whether the agency has been properly auditing the president.

As much as Trump and his administration appear to be digging their heels in on not releasing the returns,

To quote @AOC – Congress didn’t ask you.

Repeal Tax Giveaways to the Rich and Corporations

As a basic matter, we must repeal the 2017 tax cut legislation that showered millionaires and billionaires with ridiculous handouts, while adding nearly $2 trillion to the deficit. The legislation included huge giveaways for corporations and also worsened the unfair tax advantages that multinational companies have over Main Street businesses by giving provisions like an extra 50% off coupon to multinational corporations that book profits to offshore subsidiaries. And, Big Banks got huge tax windfalls at the same time that they are raking in record profits.

Yet, how did these companies use that extra money? By spending more than 140 times as much on buying back their own stock than on increasing wages for workers. We need to fix that by increasing the tax rate for corporations and closing loopholes that benefit Wall Street investors and high-paid CEOs over average Americans. We should also discourage outsourcing of jobs and investment by taxing profits at least at the same rate when they are earned by foreign subsidiaries, while making sure they don’t “invert” and re-incorporate in low tax countries.

Reinvest in American Communities

Public Education, health care for seniors and low income individuals, aid for the less physically and mentally able, providing nutrition assistance to the hungry, rebuilding roads and water pipes, tackling climate change and growing green jobs– the list of communities’ needed investments is endless. As time goes by, these needs are only going to increase. Corporations and banks used to pull more of their weight when it comes to taxes, they must pick up the slack. And, by asking the very wealthy to pay more of their fair share, we will have more money to give a hand up to those who need it most.

We can do this by taxing the wealth of millionaires and billionaires, by strengthening the estate tax, and increasing the marginal tax rates for the richest among us. At the same time, a small tax on Wall Street trades of 10 cents per $100 traded could create $777 billion in new revenues over the next decade, repaying America for crashing the economy while calming the markets by tamping down risky high-speed trading. Combined, new tax progressive policies could create trillions in new revenues that could be reinvested in our communities. Instead of turning our back on hard-hit areas, we need to create equal opportunity and provide a level playing field for all Americans.

But, once we fill all of the loopholes and otherwise strengthen the code, we will need equally strong enforcement. Right now, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is an over-politicized and under-resourced agency, and it is focused in the wrong direction. We also need to make paying taxes as easy as possible by having IRS have its own free-file program and by using return-free filing, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has proposed. Also, audits and other enforcement by the IRS should concentrate more on big-money taxpayers and corporations to maximize the agency’s bang for the buck.  And, the job of the IRS also has an impact on our democracy since it oversees tax status of nonprofits, and it must provide clear rules regarding political activity. That’s a lot of work on an agency that has seen steep cuts to its budget over recent years.

The first step toward a fairer tax code is getting Trump’s tax returns so Congress has all of the information it needs for accountability including investigations into who benefited the most from the 2017 tax changes, specifically one supposedly wealthy owner of real estate businesses. Then, Congress needs to go back to square one so that the American people can properly weigh in as our nation’s leaders take the time needed to properly craft a more progressive tax code that benefits everyone not just a privileged few

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What’s Going on with the Mueller Report?

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One of the defining qualities of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interreference in the 2016 presidential election was the absence of internal leaks. (Mueller’s team primarily communicated their case by releasing unusually detailed indictments and charging documents.)

So when news came out that the report was finished, anticipation was exceptionally high. Last Sunday, Attorney General William Barr released a 4 page “summary” of the over 400-page report. President Donald Trump and his defenders instantly began describing it as a “total exoneration”, despite the fact that the summary and report specifically state that it “does not exonerate him.” This bit of cognitive dissonance was followed by Barr claiming this his “summary” was not a “summary.” All of this was too much for some members of the Mueller team and stories began emerging that Mueller had already provided his own written summary that was bypassed for Barr’s version which was they said gave a deceptive impression.

The public deserves to see the full report for a number of reasons and the Trump administration’s absurd handling of it so far only adds to the arguments. This was the background for the 330 rallies nationwide that Public Citizen, MoveOn, Indivisible and others in the Trump is Not Above the Law coalition organized on Thursday demanding the full release of the report.

At the flagship event in front of the White House, Public Citizen’s Lisa Gilbert was joined by a number of speakers, including U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal and U.S. House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler. Nadler’s played a key role in the proceedings, including recently receiving authorization for a subpoena for the report. Nadler was received as a folk hero at the event, best captured by the spontaneous chant of “thank you” that broke out while he was on stage. You can watch a full video of the event here.

Activist pressure has already proved very consequential in this process. It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that Mueller was able to finish his investigation even though Trump threatened its very existence innumerable times. The pressure of the massive number of people that got involved in the Trump is Not Above the Law effort clearly played a significant part in the calculation.

We must keep up the pressure until we have the full report.  You can help by calling Ranking Member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee Doug Collins at 202 225-9893. Tell him that the public paid for the Mueller investigation and we deserve the full story about Russian interference in our election.

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D.C.’s Constituent Service Funds: Misused, Inequitable and Ethically Fraught

Over the past seven years D.C. Councilmember Jack Evans spent close to $163,000 on professional sports tickets. He has paid more than $14,000 to the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., in annual membership dues. Evans also spent thousands on print advertisements that largely promoted himself.

To make all these purchases, Evans did not use his own money, campaign funds, or taxpayer dollars. He used funds from his constituent service program or what is commonly referred to as a constituent service fund (CSF).

Under current D.C. campaign finance law, the mayor and members of the D.C. Council can establish constituent service funds for purposes such as “emergency housing,” “funeral arrangements,” “utility payments” and “other necessities of life.” The funds can also be used for food and refreshments and community events. All expenditures made must be done for the “primary benefit of residents of the District of Columbia.” Those who support the CSFs argue that they are needed to address constituents’ needs quickly when traditional programs might not be as easy to access.

But a look at the CSF expenditures of the District’s elected officials over the last seven years suggests that for many elected officials, meeting the emergency needs of constituents is not the primary use of those funds. D.C’s elected officials have spent tens of thousands of dollars from the funds on calendars and holiday cards, as well as campaign-style t-shirts, banners and print advertisements that do far more to publicize the elected officials than provide any constituent services. Councilmember Jack Evans, who has spent by far the most from such funds, has spent $162,816 on professional sports tickets.

Further, those elected officials who raise and spend the bulk of constituent services funds represent D.C.’s wards where residents have higher incomes. While elected officials representing the lowest income wards spend significantly less. Jack Evans represents a ward with a median household income of $104,504. Councilmember Trayon White represents a ward in which the median household income is $31,954. In 2018, Evans spent close to $58,000 in constituent service funds. In 2018, White spent about $10,000 in constituent service funds. Evans spent more on just Washington Wizards tickets in 2018 than White spent on all of his constituent services.

Washington, D.C., has one of the highest rates of income inequality in the country. In a city with so many residents struggling to make ends meet in the midst of enormous wealth and privilege, calling the distribution of D.C.’s CSFs inequitable would be an understatement.

The constituent service funds in D.C. have long been controversial and have been the subject of multiple scandals. The editorial board of The Washington Post has at least twice – first in 2011 and again in 2015 – called for the funds to be eliminated. The Post described the funds as “private slush funds” and “second campaign accounts that can be used with broad discretion.” The Washington City Paper called the funds “a joke.”

Currently, nine of D.C.’s elected officials operate a constituent service fund: Mayor Muriel Bowser, Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, and Councilmembers Kenyan McDuffie, Anita Bonds, Jack Evans, Mary Cheh, Brandon Todd, Vincent Gray and Trayon White. Five D.C. Council members choose not to operate CSFs.

Public Citizen examined more than 3,800 CSF itemized expenditures and close to $1.1 million in spending from January 2012 through December 2018. Elected officials categorize the same types of purchases in different ways – sometimes writing just one word, other times writing a short sentence. To make comparisons, Public Citizen coded the expenditures using 14 different categories. Many of the categorizations used by Public Citizen map closely with what elected officials listed on their disclosures. Further details about how Public Citizen categorized CSF expenditures appear in Appendix I.

Public Citizen analyzed constituent service fund data from 2012 through 2018 and found:

[Read the Full Report Here]


Only About a Quarter of CSF Money was Spent on Immediate Constituent Needs & Gifts

Overall, just 13 percent of the expenditures were for utility payments, rental assistance, funeral support and flowers, and other constituent assistance. Public Citizen defined the foregoing as “immediate constituent needs.” Other expenditures that plausibly fit in the broad category of assisting constituents with unmet needs are gift cards and other gifts (coats, turkeys, toys, etc.). If one combines the necessity-based expenditure categories described above – immediate constituent needs plus gift cards and other gifts – the total spending on plausible constituent needs still would only account for 24 percent of all the spending.

Councilmember Vincent Gray spent 72 percent of his CSF funds on immediate constituent needs, gift cards and gifts, the most of any elected official in this analysis. Gray is followed by Councilmember Phil Mendelson, who spent 43 percent of the CSF funds on immediate constituent needs, gift cards and gifts. At the other end of the spectrum, Councilmember Evans spent just 3 percent of his constituent service funds on immediate constituent needs, gift cards and other gifts from 2012 through 2018.

The vast majority of constituent service expenditures were on donations (which includes fundraisers, sponsorships and dues), catering and refreshments, professional sports tickets, community events, or advertising and outreach.

  • Evans spent $162,816 on professional sports tickets – amounting to 52 percent of all the money spent from his constituent service fund over the total period studied. Evans spent more on professional sports tickets in 2018 ($26,400) than every other D.C. elected official individually spent in total constituent service funds in 2018. Evans spent more on just Washington Wizards tickets in 2018 ($11,050) than Vincent Gray, Trayon White, Anita Bonds and Mary Cheh each spent on all constituent services in 2018.
  • D.C. elected officials reported spending $100,679 on various advertising and outreach (based on Public Citizen’s analysis). This total includes thousands of dollars spent on holiday cards, t-shirts, banners and print advertising. Many of these expenditures did far more to publicize the elected officials than to assist their constituents.
  • Vincent Gray and Phil Mendelson purchased large banners that dedicated the vast majority of space to their names. Mary Cheh, Gray and Mendelson all used constituent service funds to buy t-shirts that do not appear to be much different than campaign t-shirts.

D.C. elected officials also spent tens of thousands of dollars helping their constituents, but these expenditures only accounted for about a quarter of the constituent service expenditures from 2012 through 2018. Phil Mendelson spent tens of thousands of dollars on rental and utility assistance. Muriel Bowser gave away hundreds of coats. Brandon Todd has done the same. Vincent Gray and Trayon White have given away hundreds of Thanksgiving turkeys. Kenyan McDuffie and Bowser have given away thousands of dollars’ worth of grocery store gift cards. And Mendelson, Gray, Mary Cheh and others have given away Christmas toys.

CSF Money is Not Distributed Equitably; More Money is Spent in Higher Income Wards

D.C.’s Ward 8 has the lowest median household income, the highest unemployment rate, and the largest share of families in poverty. But Councilmember Trayon White, who represents Ward 8, spends approximately $32,000 less in constituent service funds each year than Jack Evans, who represents a ward with a median income more than triple that of White’s Ward 8.

  • On average, Jack Evans annually spends three and a half times as much as Trayon White in total constituent service funds. But Trayon White actually spends $881 more than Evans on immediate constituent needs, gifts and gift cards each year.
  • While current law prohibits elected officials from raising any more than $40,000 in aggregate each calendar year for their CSFs, elected officials may transfer leftover money from their campaign accounts to their CSFs. Trayon White has been able to win his elections raising relatively small amounts of money, putting him at a huge disadvantage in terms of access to funds to help his constituents.
  • Unless changes are made, the vast majority of CSF money will continue to be spent in the higher income wards. Evans’ most recent CSF financial statement (as of January 1, 2019) reports $143,152 in cash on hand. Trayon White’s CSF has just $1,088. It would take Evans 2.4 years just to spend his cash on hand, under the $60,000 per year expenditure level.

Maxed Out Campaign Contributors, Government Contractors and Lobbyists Contribute to CSFs

D.C. constituent service funds covered in this analysis accrued $1.2 million from 2012 through 2018. Close to half of the money has come from the campaign account of the elected official. The bulk of the remaining funds were raised from corporations and individuals.

  • Contributions to CSFs are counted separately from campaign contributions, meaning an individual can contribute the maximum amount to both a CSF and a campaign account. Public Citizen analyzed a hypothetical scenario in which contributions to CSFs would count towards campaign contribution limits. If that were the case, there would have been 189 excessive contributions totaling $84,655 during the time period we studied. Jack Evans would have received the most excessive contributions by far – 118 contributions totaling $54,200.
  • D.C. government contractors like Blue Skye Construction, Fort Myer Construction and EastBanc Technologies contributed thousands to the constituent service funds of D.C. elected officials from 2012 through 2018. These companies also received millions in D.C. government contracts. Some of these contributions will be banned in the future with the recent passage of legislation.
  • Prominent D.C. lobbying firms like Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, and powerful D.C. lobbyists including Kerry Pearson, Thorn Pozen and David Wilmot have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to D.C.’s CSFs.

Proposed Reforms

While it is Public Citizen’s belief that these funds should be abolished, currently there appears to be little appetite among the D.C. Council to do so. A provision that would have abolished the funds was removed from the Campaign Finance Reform Amendment Act of 2018 to ensure the bill’s passage. If the CSFs are to continue, serious reforms are needed. Some suggested reforms are listed below:

  • Ban private contributions to CSFs. Budget – using taxpayer funds – $10,000 to $20,000 per calendar year for each elected official to use to help constituents with immediate needs. This would give all elected officials equal opportunity to help constituents. Under the current system, the fundraising prowess, political power and connections of each elected official largely dictates how much help constituents receive.
  • Create tighter restrictions on how the money can be spent. Advertisements and outreach using constituent service funds should be strictly limited to alerting constituents that help is available through these funds. References to elected officials should be prohibited in advertisements. Sports tickets, are not a good use of constituent service funds and should be prohibited.
  • Ensure that when CSF financial disclosures are submitted each expenditure is described in enough detail to ensure that one can gain an understanding of how the money was spent by reading the disclosures, without additional follow up.

On average, from 2012 through 2018, the D.C. elected officials with CSFs spent about $160,000 per year in total in CSF money. Mayor Bowser recently proposed a $15.5 billion annual budget for fiscal year 2020. If it is decided that $160,000 or $200,000 more a year is needed to help D.C. residents afford their rent or utilities, it won’t bust the budget, and it can be targeted towards those who need it most.

Currently, what constituent service funds are spent on largely depends on whatever the elected official deems to be reasonable (within the bounds of the regulations). It’s clear that Jack Evans has a much different view of what constitutes a reasonable expenditure than Anita Bonds or Kenyan McDuffie.

If constituent service funds are going to continue to exist, serious reform is needed and safeguards need to be put in place. Hoping elected officials use the money wisely is not good policy. Requiring them to do so is.

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Boeing Crash Shows Perils of Allowing Corporations to Regulate Themselves

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The death of 157 people on an Ethiopian Airlines flight earlier this month was an awful human tragedy.

It’s also a cautionary tale about what happens if we allow corporations to regulate themselves.

The public is starting to learn more about the circumstances behind the crash of a Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet in Ethiopia as well as in a similar lethal crash in Indonesia last fall. Both crashes of a brand-new new model of airplane may be connected to the failure of an automated system designed to prevent the plane from stalling. Federal prosecutors and the U.S. Department of Transportation are investigating the development of the 737 MAX, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The roots of the problem go back to well before Donald Trump became president. Over the past decade, the FAA has pushed to delegate responsibility for assessing risk to airplane manufacturers themselves.

The Seattle Times reported that managers at the Federal Aviation Administration in 2015 pressed safety engineers at the agency to delegate assessments of safety to Boeing and pushed for approval. A former FAA safety engineer told the newspaper that “there was constant pressure to re-evaluate our initial decisions” and “there was continued discussion by management about delegating even more items down to the Boeing Company.”

These troubling revelations are raising serious concerns among aviation experts. “It raises for me the question of whether the agency is properly funded, properly staffed and whether there has been enough independent oversight,” Jim Hall, an aviation-safety consultant and former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board told Bloomberg News.

The FAA’s sluggishness is consistent with the agency’s reputation for regulatory lethargy. The Transportation Department’s former inspector general, Mary Schaivo, has criticized the agency for more than two decades, saying it exhibits a pattern of failing to act until lives are lost. “Our safety agency is called the tombstone agency … because they wait for major loss of life before they make a safety change,” she told lawmakers in 1997, after the crash of ValueJet flight in the Florida Everglades killed 110 people.

It may take or months to get to the bottom of what happened in the two tragic crashes. But it is clear that Boeing, a defense contractor and airplane maker, has long had a cozy relationship with politicians of both parties.

Former President Barack Obama lavished praise on Boeing, calling it an “iconic company,” and touted his administration’s record in selling Boeing’s planes. “Other than maybe the CEO of Boeing, I don’t know anybody who’s done more to sell Boeing planes around the world than me and this administration,” Obama said. While in Vietnam last month, President Donald Trump praised two Vietnamese airlines for purchasing more than 100 Boeing jets. Even after the Ethiopia crash, Trump called Boeing a “a great, great company with a track record that is so phenomenal.” Boeing contributed  $1 million toward Trump’s inauguration and contributed the same amount to President Barack Obama’s inauguration.

Federal law prohibits government contractors from making campaign contributions to candidates, parties and political committees. The law is intended to prevent companies from bribing officials to win lucrative contracts and to prevent lawmakers from extorting money from companies with business pending before the government

However, the absence of strict rules requiring major public companies and federal contractors to disclose their political activity to shareholders and the public means that companies can funnel money through a web of untraceable dark money entities.

Unfortunately, another major loophole in the law defeats this purpose: contractors may establish PACs to make these same campaign contributions. Boeing takes full advantage of this loophole, laundering millions of dollars of campaign contributions directly to lawmakers and even to dark money groups. As a result, Boeing has well-endeared itself to those responsible for issuing defense contracts. Boeing shareholders have filed a resolution up for a vote at the company’s annual meeting in April calling on the company to disclose the full extent of its lobbying activities.

Since 1990, Boeing’s political action committees and individual company employees have contributed $32.6 million to federal candidates, with 52 percent going to Republicans and 46 percent going to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The company has spent nearly $170 million on federal lobbying over the past 10 years.

Boeing has received more than $100 billion in unclassified defense contracts between 2014 and 2018, according to Reuters, and received $64 billion in federal loans and loan guarantees and $457 million in federal grants from 2000 to 2014, according to a study by Good Jobs First.

As of last year, 98 lobbyists represented Boeing, with 71 having previously worked for Congress or the executive branch, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Of these 98 lobbyists, 31 work for Boeing directly, with the remainder working for outside firms. The revolving door between Boeing and Congress swings both ways; CNN reported that a former Boeing lobbyist, John Keast, is staff director of a key Senate committee overseeing aviation issues.

The small army of lobbyists advocating for Boeing include dozens of former congressional and federal agency staffers as well as one former congressman, retired Rep. Norm Dicks, a Democrat from Boeing’s former home state of Washington.

Dicks had the moniker “Mr. Boeing” and helped the company win a $35 billion air tanker refueling contract. When the contract was announced in 2011, Dicks said it was “the happiest day in my professional life.”

Boeing also has employed 51 people who either currently serve as federal officials or have done so in the past. Those include Patrick Shanahan, the current acting secretary of defense, who spent more than 30 years as a Boeing executive before joining the Trump administration.

Though Shahahan is required to recuse himself from decisions involving Boeing, the Pentagon has faced criticism over several multibillion–dollar contracts awarded to Boeing, as well as an ethics complaint calling for an investigation into whether Shanahan promoted Boeing and disparaged competitors. The complaint came after a report by Bloomberg said that a Pentagon request for $1.2 billion for 12 Boeing F-15X fighter aircraft was made “with some prodding” by Shanahan. Defense News reported that the purchase of the aircraft “ was essentially forced upon the Air Force.”

Politico reported that Shanahan’s loyalty to Boeing continued into his government service. Shanahan reportedly excoriated Boeing rival Lockheed Martin over its $1 trillion F-35 fighter jet, calling it  “f—ed up” and claiming that if the contract for this jet “had gone to Boeing, it would be done much better.”

The Justice Department’s national security division is led by John Demers, a former Boeing vice president and assistant general counsel.  Another former Boeing executive, Mira Ricardel, worked as deputy national security adviser, but was fired after a dispute with Melania Trump.

After the Ethiopia crash, Trump spoke on the phone to Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, who argued that the planes should not be grounded. It wasn’t until a day later that both Trump and Boeing reversed course in the face of public pressure and grounded the planes – after Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany and the European Union had already done so. Muilenburg has said he developed a personal relationship with Trump, telling a radio interviewer in February that Trump “cares about business” and “creates open communication lines.”

We need elected officials and regulators who will stick up for the safety of the flying public rather than the profits of airplane makers.

 

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Manafort Sentencing Underscores the Need for Transparent Results of Mueller Probe

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During former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s sentencing hearing in federal court on Wednesday, his lawyers made a peculiar point: had it not been for Special Counsel Robert Mueller III’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and the possibility of the Trump campaign’s cooperation or President Trump’s obstruction of justice, Manafort’s many crimes—his financial crimes, as well as his unregistered lobbying , his conspiracy to obstruct justice, and his conspiracy against the United States exemplified by his sharing of polling data during the campaign with Russian associate Konstantin Kilminik—would likely have never been discovered.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson in the Washington, D.C. District Court did not find the argument convincing in the way Manafort’s attorneys had intended—to argue for lessened sentencing. But the lawyers were absolutely correct that the public would likely know little to nothing about the crimes of Manafort and other associates of the Trump 2016 campaign were it not for the Mueller probe. Unintentionally, these lawyers effectively made the case that the special counsel’s investigation has been invaluable in helping the American public understand what happened in the attack on our elections, and that therefore we have a right to know the full extent of Mueller’s findings.

At present, the Mueller investigation has led to indictments and/or plea deals from 37 known defendants—including Manafort, as well as Trump’s former personal lawyer Michel Cohen, his former campaign aides George Papadopoulos and Rick Gates, his former national security advisor Michael Flynn, and his longtime adviser Roger Stone. This has resulted in at least 199 criminal charges and five prison sentences already. The amount of criminal activity that the Mueller probe has uncovered and brought into public awareness is staggering.

It is clear that the special counsel’s office has been extremely effective in rooting out evidence of attacks made against the United States electoral system in the 2016 election as well as a number of other crimes. It is also clear based on what the public already knows about Mueller’s findings that the assault on our electoral system was massive, and we, the taxpayers who have funded the investigation, deserve to know the full scope of its findings. This, of course, may include evidence of whether or not our president knew about or took part in that assault, or acted to obstruct justice in covering it up—information which is absolutely critical for ensuring that our citizens feel they can trust our government.

Despite this, the president’s recently Senate-approved Attorney General, Bill Barr, has declined to commit to release the special counsel’s final conclusions in full to Congress and the public. Barr’s shakiness on this matter is not only morally indefensible—it is also deeply unpopular.

A recent poll shows that 81 percent of the public, including strong majorities of both Democrats and Republicans, support the public release of Mueller’s report. Thankfully, it appears that our members of Congress are listening to this public demand—today, a resolution to demand transparency on any final report made by the special counsel passed through the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 420-0. The implications are clear: the public deserves to know everything that the Mueller probe has turned up.

Now it falls to the Senate to respond to the immense demand of the American people. While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has obstructed previous efforts to protect the Mueller investigation, it is essential that he allow a vote on public transparency of Mueller’s findings. The Senate must vote on and pass the bipartisan Special Counsel Transparency Act introduced by Senators Blumenthal and Grassley.

Americans deserve to understand the details of Mueller’s findings without presidential spin. We deserve to know about the full scale of the assault on our electoral system, including details of President Trump’s possible criminal activity. We need to feel assured that in the United States, no one is above the law.

 

Photo Credit: Flickr user DonkeyHotey
“Paul Manafort – Caricature||CC/BY2.0

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